My Services: The Path to Belonging
Psychological Evaluations
You feel like you don’t fit in the world. Your mood is all over the place and you don’t know why. You can’t focus on anything. You’re struggling at work and your relationships because of the chaos in your mind. You’ve tried everything and don’t know where to go next.
Psychological evaluations are an excellent route for bringing clarity to what’s going on in your mind and life and help map out the next steps to your healing journey. Based on the issues you are experiencing, I will take you through a collection of tests and detailed conversations with me to help understand what specific mental health issues are impacting you. Once we narrow that down, we can discuss recommendations to empower you in taking the next steps of your healing journey and get you to feeling more like yourself.
My Areas of Testing
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Complex PTSD (CPTSD)
Depression disorders
Anxiety disorders
Bipolar Disorders
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Personality Disorders
Substance Use Disorders
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
The Process
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You and I will talk about your concerns and decide on a testing approach that suits your needs.
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You and I sit down for at least one (but sometimes multiple) in-depth conversation about your experience with the presenting issues and various other areas of your life, such as your childhood, employment, education, health, and any other area that may contribute to your struggles.
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You will complete different tests and focused questionnaires that focus on your specific concerns. The set of tests you complete are tailored to your needs and vary for each person and issue. These may include evaluations of personality, mood, achievement, and/or cognitive/intelligence evaluations.
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After all the interviews and tests are done, I will narrow down the best understanding of your concerns and recommendations for your path to healing. I will write this all in a detailed report that you can take with you. We will sit down together and talk about what I found and recommendations tailored to your healing needs.
The Cost
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$500
Brief testing measures and clinical interview to assess if mental health concerns are present. I will provide recommendations if the issues can be further assessed in regular therapy or if additional testing is required to determine more complex issues.
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$1500
This is for evaluations that need an in-depth look at your concerns beyond the brief testing. I use more complex tests and interviews to differentiate between multiple causes and diagnoses related to the concerns. This may include 1.5+ hours of completing the tests along with 1.5+ hours of interviews.
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$2000
This testing looks at the whole person from personality, cognition/intelligence, achievement, and general psychological functioning. This is the most in-depth testing provided. The testing process may last 3+ hours with 1.5+ hours of interviews.
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All my services are private pay at this time even though I plan to become credentialed with insurance in the future. Even though I do not take insurance, I can provide a superbill for you to present to your insurance carrier for reimbursement.
Therapy Services
Therapy is a prime place to begin the healing journey. It’s a place for you to belong, feel understood, and begin to explore all the aspects of you. It is a place and relationship to feel safe, gain confidence, and explore what is getting in your way and start feeling more like yourself. I want to offer that space for you so we can start helping you feel more connected to yourself, others, and the world. I am well-versed and have extensive training in several evidenced based therapy approaches, such as psychodynamic, ACT, CBT, CPT, and exposure therapies. While I primarily work from a psychodynamic lens, I approach healing with an integrative style from all my training because everyone and their needs are unique. We create a healing path that works and fits with you.
I currently provide individual therapy both in person and virtually for adults. I do not provide therapy to minors, couples, or familiies. My hope is to start groups to facilitate more opportunities for connection, but for right now that is a dream for the future!
Areas of Expertise
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Complex PTSD
Attachment/relational trauma
Substance abuse
Depression
Anxiety
Personality difficulties
Emotional dysregulation (those big feelings)
Relationship issues
The Cost
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$180/session
This is for your traditional regular therapy sessions where we meet once or twice a week or less.
For those on a budget, see the tab about sliding scale/pro bono work.
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$200/session
This applies when we are completing a structured treatment in a compressed timeframe, ideally 3 sessions or more a week. I offer these sessions on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. This is for treatments such as CPT or PE which are not designed to go over a set number of sessions.
For those on a budget, see the tab about sliding scale and pro bono work!
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All my services are private pay at this time. I am in the process of getting credentialed with multiple insurance companies.
Even though I do not take insurance, I can provide a superbill for you to present to your insurance carrier for reimbursement.
For those on a budget, see the tab about sliding scale and pro bono work!
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I always carry limited slots available for sliding scale or pro bono (free) therapy. The sliding scale is negotiated on a case by case basis and the needs of each individual. It can range from $20 to $170/session. Reach out and we can see how I can help you!
The Process
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We can talk for an initial 15-minute consultation to discuss your needs and determine if we are a good match. This is a time for you to get a feel for me and for me to determine if I am the best person to address your concerns.
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In the first session, we will discuss your concerns, goals you are wanting to reach, and how my approach may help in that process.
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If we decide to start this journey together, we will decide together how often we will meet. Everyone is different in what they need. Most often I meet with people once per week. However, some folks do better with more support multiple times a week while others need every two weeks. We will decide this together based on your emotional and financial needs and both of our scheduling availability.
Treatment Approaches
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Psychodynamic and attachment therapies focus on childhood development and relationships and how those experience shaped how you navigate your current life and relationships. We discuss your relationships both within and outside the therapy room, their connections to old experiences, and use that insight to locate new ways of showing up and experiencing the relationships with yourself, others, and the world.
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ACT is a therapy focused on finding and developing meaning in your life. In ACT, we focus on becoming more present and open to your thoughts and feelings, identifying what you really care about in life, and helping you to show up in your life and relationships in ways that feel valuable and meaningful to you.
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CPT is a well-researched therapy for the treatment of PTSD. We focus on how your current belief system was shaped by a trauma event - what it means about yourself, others, and the world. We help process the trauma by exploring the beliefs that are keeping you stuck and not allowing you to move foward in healing. In CPT, we work with those beliefs and give you tools in how to navigate and change them!
CPT can last between 8 and 20 sessions, but it typically lasts about 12 weekly therapy sessions. Since I only get to work with someone for 50 minutes. The sessions can be performed once, twice, or even three to four times per week as an intensive treatment.
Like any new skill, practice is key. The more you do it, the more you get out of it. Therefore, you will have practice assignments between sessions to really help facilitate meaningful change in your life.
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PE is an exposure therapy designed to treatment PTSD and has some of the most research behind its effectiveness. I have personally witnessed it change people’s lives in dramatic fashion.
The main idea is that the more we interact with something we fear, the more confident we will feel around it. The same goes for processing trauma where there is a lot of very understandable pain and fear around a certain memory or experiences that remind you of the that event. The more we interact with those things in a safe and controlled way, the more your confidence, sense of competence, and safety will build. This also gives you tools and skills for the rest of your life in how to navigate unwanted memories and anxiety in situations that are otherwise reasonably safe.
During PE sessions, we will spend time exposing you to the memory of the event with me by your side and processing it afterward. We will also have you go into your life and start interacting with safe activities and experiences you may be avoiding. We do all of this in a systematic way and decide together what levels of exposure are manageable for you personally.
Like any new skill, practice is key. The more you do it, the more you get out of it. Therefore, you will have practice assignments between sessions to really help facilitate meaningful change in your life. PE typically ranges from 8 to 16 therapy sessions that last 90 minutes each. The average is about 10 sessions but it all depends on how the mind responds to the process. The sessions can be performed once, twice, or even three to four times per week as an intensive treatment.
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COPE is a therapy specifically designed to address PTSD and substance abuse issues as the two often run together.
COPE combines PE for PTSD with coping skills for substance use. We will apply the similar protocol from PE for PTSD (see the PE tab for more details) but also directly address coping skills for managing the substance use all at the same time. Clients will have practice assignments consistent with that found in PE but also skills to practice in addressing their substance use.
COPE is a 12-session protocol but can be shortened or extended longer depending on the needs and response from the mind as it heals! COPE sessions last 90 minutes and can be offered once or twice per week.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Get In Touch
If you're interested in working with Dr. Peters, please fill out the contact form to setup an initial consultation.